from the you-can-have-a-drug-war-or-you-can-have-a-Fourth-Amendment,-but-not-both dept

The Supreme Court's recent track record on the Fourth Amendment has been inconsistent, to say the least. For every win -- like the warrant requirement for cellphone searches incident to arrest (Riley v. California) -- there's been a loss -- the court's granting of permanent forgiveness for officers who predicate stops on nonexistent laws (Heien v. North Carolina), as long as the mistake is determined to be "objectively reasonable."

On March 27, 2012, Nebraska police officer Morgan Struble stopped Dennys Rodriguez for swerving once towards the shoulder of the road. After questioning Rodriguez and issuing him a written warning, Struble asked permission to walk his drug-sniffing dog around the outside of Rodriguez's vehicle. When Rodriguez refused, Struble made him exit the vehicle and wait for backup to arrive. Roughly eight minutes later, a second officer showed up, and Struble led his dog around the car. The dog gave an "alert" for illegal drugs, and a subsequent search turned up a bag of methamphetamine.

A previous decision by the Supreme Court (Illinois v. Caballes) concluded that the use of a drug-sniffing dog during a regular traffic stop was not a Fourth Amendment violation, provided the stop was not prolonged past the point of "completing that mission [the traffic stop]." Prolonged stops have been argued before, but in this particular case, there was no question that the "mission" had been "completed." It was only after the officer told Rodriguez he would let him off with warning that he brought up the subject of searching the vehicle.

The DOJ's lawyer, Ginger Anders, argued that officers should have some leeway in determining the "sequence of the stop." Applied to this situation, the DOJ is basically arguing that a cop can tell you you're free to go and then ask you to wait while he brings in a drug dog to search your vehicle. Anders' theory is that this contradictory sequence still respects the Fourth Amendment so long as the length of the stop doesn't exceed the nebulous standard of "routine time needed."

It's this slippery "routine time" that most of the argument is focused on. Both sides attempted to determine where that lies exactly on the space-time continuum, but Rodriguez's lawyer (reasonably) pointed out that the key issue should be the "completion of the mission," not the amount of time it takes to reach that point.

This attempt to reduce the Fourth Amendment to a specific number of minute-hand movement reaches its simultaneous zenith/nadir during this exchange with the DOJ's lawyer.

JUSTICE BREYER: Okay. But that's where ­­ I thought that position that I've tried to -- ­­let me state it more clearly, I think. It is unlawful to have the dog sniff where the dog sniff unreasonably prolongs the stop, is that -- ­does --­­ is that okay if I write with the government -- ­­ if I write those words in an opinion?

MS. ANDERS: That's right. But we don't think that a dog sniff performed right after the ticket per se unreasonably prolongs the stop. And if I could give you a hypothetical that ­­--

JUSTICE BREYER: Ah. Well, how ­ if the ticket­writing is over and there is nothing else to do and the policeman says, hey, this is over, at that point has it not unreasonably prolonged the stop if the sniff takes place afterwards?

MS. ANDERS: I don't think so. I mean, just imagine ­­--

JUSTICE BREYER: Because?

JUSTICE SCALIA: Because that takes only two minutes and that's not unreasonable, right?

MS. ANDERS: That's right. And it doesn't take into account how he stops ­­--

JUSTICE SCALIA: Big deal. The dog walks around the car for two minutes. That's ­­--

CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: It's only a violation of the Fourth Amendment for two minutes, right?

(Laughter.)

Presumably, Scalia was being facetious. But the underlying thrust of the government's position is clear: it wants the leeway to perform extraneous searches so long as it can fit it in under a vague time limit determined by an even vaguer "reasonable standard."

And if that's not feasible because the 2005 Caballes decision theoretically limits stops to a "reasonable" length of time, the government proposes another solution: just stick a K-9 in every cop car. Justice Sotomayor steps up to shut down this line of thinking.

MS. ANDERS: So the hypothetical that I propose is that if you imagine you have two officers conducting a stop and the first officer is explaining the ticket and what's happening with the ticket to the person, to the driver. While he's doing that, the second officer is performing the dog sniff around the car. If the officer who's explaining the ticket ends first and the dog sniff takes another 30 seconds, I don't think there's any reason to say that that stop, which maybe lasted a total of ten minutes has -- has gone on for longer than reasonably required to complete the traffic ticket.

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Well, I have a ­­-- I have a real fundamental question, because this line drawing is only here because we've now created a Fourth Amendment entitlement to search for drugs by using dogs, whenever anybody's stopped. Because that's what you're proposing. And is that really what the Fourth Amendment should permit?

MS. ANDERS: I don't think it's an entitlement, Justice Sotomayor. I think once the Court said in Caballes that ­-- that it is permissible in some circumstances to perform a dog sniff during a traffic stop, then ­­--

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: Well, in some circumstances. So why don't ­-- why don't we keep it cabined to Caballes, which is when it's being done simultaneous with writing the ticket. If it's not, then it's unlawful.

MS. ANDERS: Well, because that leads to arbitrary results as I was explaining with Justice Breyer, I think in that hypothetical ­­--

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR: It's not arbitrary. The Fourth Amendment is arbitrary by its nature. It says you can't search unless you have probable cause to search.

Later on, as this particular angle is argued further, Sotomayor comes down even more harshly on the government's assertions, noting that what it's attempting to do is grant itself more power at the expense of citizens' rights.

But the way Justice Breyer has said this -- what he's saying is you can't unreasonably prolong. You can't hold a person any -- any measurable time that would allow to get the dog. And, yes, it has to do with the resources of the police department, but we can't keep bending the Fourth Amendment to the resources of law enforcement. Particularly when this stop is not -- is not incidental to the purpose of the stop. It's purely to help the police get more criminals, yes. But then the Fourth Amendment becomes a useless piece of paper.

This appears to be the DOJ's goal, if its arguments in this case -- and previous cases like Riley -- are to be believed. In its eyes, the Fourth Amendment is something that should be subject to law enforcement's needs and wants, rather than something to be respected and complied with.

from the nicely-done dept

Earlier this week, we wrote about how John Oliver had not only "solved" the problem of the Supreme Court not allowing cameras in the court (but releasing audio tape) by setting up a fake Supreme Court with dogs, but had also made the raw footage available and asked other news media to make use of them. I had wondered if anyone would actually take him up on it. There's at least one. The good folks over at The Verge have remixed the Supreme Court's hearings on Aereo, and it's pretty damn entertaining. They even make use of the shot of "Dog" Justice Alito humping "Dog" Justice Kagan.

from the not-cats? dept

For many years, we've discussed the pure ridiculousness of the Supreme court's adamant refusal to allow cameras in the courtroom, along with the Justices' questionable justifications of the ban. Now it appears that John Oliver has taken up the issue as well, but unlike those just whining about it, Oliver (thanks to the resources of HBO) has a possible "solution." Dogs.

Oliver starts out mocking Justice Antonin Scalia's reason for barring cameras: that people would just see 15- or 30-second clips from the arguments, taking things out of context. Of course, as Oliver points out, that makes absolutely no sense, since the Supreme Court already releases audio of the hearings, and thus we already do hear the same clips -- it's just that they're generally paired with artistic renderings of the Justices instead of the actual video.

His solution -- using "an almost immoral amount of resources" -- is to present video representations of the entire Supreme Court... using dogs (and a couple of birds in supporting roles). And, Oliver claims, they're making those videos freely available to any other news provider who would like to create complete reenactments of any court case in a way that is cute and guaranteed to draw more attention than the court renderings, or, hell, actual videos if they were ever allowed. You can see the full ten minutes of footage (and, yes, I watched it all) right here:

That video also, helpfully, links to the Supreme Court's oral arguments audio page for people to download. And the video description notes:

Please feel free to use it, post your videos, and tag them #RealAnimalsFakePaws so we can find them.

The only disappointment is that whoever put it up, still officially left it under a "standard" license, rather than the Creative Commons license that YouTube makes available. Still, nice move by Oliver and his team.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Animal behavior is getting more and more attention as researchers discover that our animal friends exhibit emotional responses seemingly similar to ours. It's hard to "prove" animals experience complex emotions or thoughts (in fact, you never prove anything in science... you can only disprove things), but mounting evidence seems to suggest that many animals have reactions that we might predict based on our own psychological knowledge. Here are just a few interesting studies on animals acting like us somehow.

from the all-in-the-name-of-the-'worst-of-the-worst' dept

There's good intentions behind it, but the implications are worrying. For years now, dogs have been trained to sniff out drugs by law enforcement agencies. (Well, in most cases, trained by third-party specialists before being turned over to law enforcement agencies.) The problem is that these dogs now ride around in cruisers and give the police "probable cause" to perform vehicle searches and, believe it or not, hours of rectal/vaginal searches, simply by "alerting" to an odor.

The recent arrival of golden Labrador Thoreau makes Rhode Island the second state in the nation to have a police dog trained to sniff out hard drives, thumb drives and other technological gadgets that could contain child pornography.

Thoreau received 22 weeks of training in how to detect devices in exchange for food at the Connecticut State Police Training Academy.

The plus side is that, at least to this point, the dogs are only being used to assist with search warrants, rather than riding along with patrolmen and nosing around vehicles of drivers deemed too nervous to be guilty of nothing more than a traffic infraction.

But like drug dogs, the urge to generate positives is indulged.

Houston demonstrated the dog's skills last month. Houston walked the dog through a room in which he had hidden devices. A second pass went more slowly, with Houston coaxing the dog. "Show me. Show me."

Thoreau furiously sniffed shelves, desks, cabinets. The dog located a hard drive inside a Ziploc bag in the upper shelf of a desk. A flash drive and thumb drive were also found, with the dog zeroing in on their location down to the exact drawer. In exchange, Thoreau got food.

"This is how he eats every day," says Houston, who cares for the dog around the clock.

The stakes get higher when the dogs are deployed in the hunt for child pornography/pornographers. Training a dog to alert on devices makes any device it detects instantly suspect. And when it fails to find anything, the presumption will be adjusted to fit the lack of evidence. Rather than this being a sign of innocence, it will be an excuse to tear everything apart or collect additional warrants to search other locations. Because if the police have decided you're a suspect -- especially a possible child molester -- the searching won't stop until something is uncovered. Starting this chain of events by asking an animal inclined to please its handlers just makes the chain of unfortunate events unfold faster.

Beyond the question of whether police dogs should expand their range from drugs to electronics, there's the hysteria being irresponsibly delivered by law enforcement officials (and reprinted willingly and credulously by the local press -- because who would question someone who's arresting child molesters?) I sincerely hope the Rhode Island police are working with a more specific dataset than this:

Most child pornography offenders are white men with an average age of 41, U.S. Sentencing Commission statistics show. The majority graduated from high school and hold jobs.

No shit. Most men have graduated high school and are now employed. Quite frequently they reach the age of 41, often exceeding it by 30+ years before dying. Dumping an assertion like this into the public domain will only increase the number of people who view any man a certain distance away from children as suspicious. This doesn't help the public better discern who might be a concern while simultaneously expanding the pool of possible suspects to include all white males.

"These folks are out there trolling the Internet, trolling the streets, taking photos at the beach," [former DHS agent Eric] Caron says.

Now, the suspect pool expands to include males who go anywhere near the internet, beach or public streets. Anyone with a camera spotted in these areas is doubly suspect. The DHS has always been suspicious of photographers, and this statement turns any male with a camera (or cell phone) into one of two things: a terrorist or a child molester.

Spreading hysteria isn't going to make the job any easier. It's just going to increase the number of dead end "leads" police officers will be forced to run down. Adding dogs to the mix may make search warrants more productive, but it does carry with it the added baggage of pretending animals are impartial witnesses, rather than entities whose motivations roughly align with law enforcement's.

from the administrators-and-cops:-both-woefully-underqualified-to-educateq dept

In what seems to be a continuance of the questionable "scared straight" programs (questioned by no less that the DOJ), schools are involving kids in drills ostensibly aimed at educating them about how to react in extremely rare situations. Recently, we covered a so-called "drill" that involved a hijacked bus full of kids, which was "defused" in front of an audience comprised mainly of educators and people holding the local PD's purse strings. It was a rousing success, if your measurement standard starts at "everyone dies" and tops out at "no one was injured." This was portrayed as an essential bit of "anti-terrorism" training and an educational experience for bus drivers and students, but considering it all played out in front of town officials, the ultimate purpose seemed to be nothing more than a chance for the cops to play dress-up and get all duded up in some underused tactical gear.

Today, schools are engaging in active shooter drills. Trying to impute the best of faith to those who came up with the idea, it’s because this is perceived as the most likely tragedy that a school can face. It may not be likely, but it does happen. So why not be prepared?

"If you missed last week’s 'mad gunman terrorizes American schoolchildren' news story,this time out of North Carolina, don’t feel bad; these days they’re common enough that it’s not reasonable to expect any one person can keep up with them all.

Still, last week’s story was notable for two reasons: One, nobody actually got shot; and two, the gunman was on the school’s payroll. Seriously: Administrators at Eastern Wayne Middle School later sent parents a letter explaining that they sent a masked gunman to various sixth-grade classrooms as an 'enrichment lesson on exhibiting good citizenship and observing your surroundings.'"

The explanation letter, reducing a basic concept of disaster preparedness to the idiocy of “exhibiting good citizenship” (a good citizen does not get shot?) can be forgiven. To the extent school administrators were ever capable of using comprehensible language to explain something clearly and accurately, they are now paid by the jargon phrase used and can’t be expected to forget the entirety of their education and experience. Just ignore it.

A suburban Chicago high school ran a “code red” drill with the gunmen shooting blanks in January. Last month, an Indiana school ran a shooting drill replete with blood and a body count.

Last year, an El Paso, Tex., school set up a shocking surprise lockdown simulation that enraged parents like Stephanie Belcher, whose son sent her a panicked text message.

“He said, ‘I’m not kidding. There’s gunshots and people screaming and we were locked in a storage closet,’ ” Belcher told KFOX-TV. “These kids thought that their classmates were being killed and that they could be next. There’s no excuse for that.”

The potential for harm, either physical or emotional, is high. "Preparing" students for a highly unlikely event by terrorizing them teaches them nothing more than "this situation is terrifying." It's highly doubtful anyone from the administration side is learning anything either. If they were, they might realize how counterproductive it is to prepare for an event you can't control by inducing a uninformed state of panic in the student body. No amount of tying "try not to die" to citizenship ideals is going to change that.

In Brazil, Indiana, Judge J. Blaine Akers decided to kick off a weeklong "Red Ribbon Awareness" event at the courthouse by grabbing some local elementary school students and subjecting them to a simulated drug search. Things went predictably bad.

According to the report, the officer and his K-9 partner, Max, as well as another K-9 team were requested by Clay County Superior Court Judge J. Blaine Akers to carry out a simulated raid of a party with actors in place to help "educate the Clay County fifth-graders on drug awareness."

He added the juveniles in the scenario met with officers prior to the start and were asked to remain still when the dogs searched for narcotics.

McQueen said a very small amount of illegal drugs were hidden on one of the juveniles to show how the dogs can find even the smallest trace of an illegal substance. He added all this was done "under exclusive control and supervision of members of the court and law enforcement." Four scenarios were carried out that day with the incident occurring during the third scenario.

"As I got closer to the actors, Max began searching the juveniles," according to the officer's report. "The first male juvenile began moving his legs around as Max searched him. When the male began moving his legs, (this is what) I believe prompted Max's action to bite the male juvenile on the left calf."

In appreciation for his participation in this bizarre "simulation," the fifth grader was gifted with a free trip to the hospital to treat puncture wounds. There's a lot that's impossibly stupid about this judge's ill-advised "demonstration," but there apparently wasn't a single cop who thought this might be a bad idea -- certainly not beforehand and, judging from the post-incident comments, not in hindsight, either.

"It was an unfortunate accident," said Brazil Police Chief Clint McQueen. "Wish it hadn't happened like that but it did. We are trying to evaluate (the incident) to make sure nothing like this happens again."

Easy. Don't subject people, whether they're elementary student or adults, to fake drug sweeps, especially if you're going to plant drugs on them and send a dog trained to react aggressively to drugs and sudden movements out to give them a nasal patdown.

What's important to note within this story beyond the obvious, is the unstated ease in which the cops planted dope on the child.

That's comforting news for anyone who's had a law enforcement officer touch their person or belongings. Also comforting? The fact that the officers pursued statements from other children to corroborate their story.

The other K-9 officer met with Walters after the incident and said that several other children involved in the scenario saw the young man shake his legs when Max approached.

McQueen said the incident was not anything "out of control," but just a quick reaction by the dog to the young man's sudden movement.

Kids move. Kids get nervous or bored or uncomfortable and move. Even adults, innocent adults, get nervous when engaging with law enforcement and will move inadvertently. These officers put kids in the path of an animal that's been trained to be half-investigator, half-weapon and expected everything to go well.

And all of this was, according to the judge who set it up, an "educational" experience meant to raise "drug awareness." But in practice, it's little more than Scared Straight Lite. Instead of spending time with criminals, kids are spending more and more time in the presence of armed officers -- people they believe are supposed to be their protectors but whose actual mileage may vary after being bitten by an attack dog or locked in a closet listening to gunshots and screaming.

On the other hand, perhaps some sort of educational growth is being obtained, although it certainly isn't what those ordering this drills and exercises would hope to be the outcome. Kids may be learning that law enforcement officers are inscrutable and possibly dangerous. They may be learning that inadvertent movements, if viewed as "threatening" or "sudden" by officers (and their dogs), are instantly punishable by the application of pain... or worse. They may also be learning that those in power entertain themselves by performing a whole lot of dubious "somethings" that toy with the emotional health of those under their control, solely in order to show constituents that they're on top of the problem -- whether it's school shootings, drug use or plain old disobedience.

from the i-hate-you dept

Normally when we write up posts discussing idiot criminals and their internet exploits, they're a bit of levity in an otherwise maddening world. Whether they're taunting law enformcement or posting pictures of the meals they're eating with the feds, their stupidity is typically enjoyable. This is not one of those stories. Instead, this is a story about a stupid criminal who may well be the worst woman currently in existence.

Adrienne Martin was apparently taking care of her sister-in-law's dog. Claiming the dog had acted aggressively, she chained the animal in the backyard and lit it on fire. The dog died shortly after it was found and taken to a stray rescue. Then Martin did what any psychopath would do: bragged about it on Facebook.

Martin, who has been charged with felony animal abuse, reportedly said on Facebook, “I’m on killa mode… kill dogs… today. I mean what I say and I say what I mean… all dogs don’t go to heaven.”

Martin is the kind of person that makes people hope there's a Hell to which she may eventually retire. The cruelty is obviously astounding as is her depraved commentary on her social media page. Thankfully, those investigating her crime were tipped to her comments and she's been arrested and charged with two felonies.

So, while I typically mock dumb criminals for posting about their exploits, I want to thank Ms. Martin for doing so in this case. Any action that expedites the stripping of your freedom is good in my book.

from the seems-like-common-sense dept

The natural enemy of the family dog is the local cop. Some of the stories we hear about cops shooting dogs, man, it’s like they don’t even try to deal with the animal reasonably. They shoot first and put the leash on later. I get that some people are just irrationally afraid of dogs, but cops are armed and in stressful situations. And since “dog murder” isn’t really a thing, there’s no incentive for cops to hold their fire.

We’ve reported in the past about how jury awards are going up when cops are found to recklessly kill family pets. But money cannot replace the companionship of a best friend.

Now, one state is trying to take more decisive action by requiring cops to learn how to deal with “short, hairy children”….

The Denver Post (gavel bang: ABA Journal) reports that a bill called the “Don’t Shoot My Dog” law is making its way through the Colorado State Senate.

The bill would require police officers to undergo training on how to deal with dogs. And it has bipartisan support:

“The reason I think it is important is dogs are not just property to most people, they are their short, hairy children,” [said Jennifer Edwards of The Animal Law Center]. “They are a part of the family, and it is absolutely devastating to lose an animal and to lose an animal so wrongfully when it could be solved by better training and better understanding of dog behavior.”

The bill’s sponsors, Democrat Lucia Guzman and Republican David Balmer, point out that “landscaping companies [and] delivery companies” deal with dogs all the time, without shooting them.

Some of the stories about police brutality to dogs are disgusting:

Among those expected to testify in favor of their bill is Gary Branson of Pueblo, whose 4-year-old labrador mix was shot multiple times by a Commerce City police officer after the pet escaped a relative’s home.

In Branson’s case, the 58-year-old left Chloe with a relative while visiting his brother in California last November. The dog got out through an open garage door and was running around the neighborhood.

Commerce City police said the dog was aggressive and continued to behave that way after being restrained with an animal-control noose. Chloe was shocked with a Taser and then shot multiple times.

What kind of sick person Tasers and shoots a family lab that has already been restrained?

Dogs are not people and shouldn’t be treated as such under the law. But they’re not mere property either. We need to carve out a legal space for our furry companions that at least respects our rights to keep them alive.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

The search for intelligent life might be more fruitful if we started looking more closely at other animals right here on Earth. The progress of artificial intelligence in computers might also be surpassed by breeding a few hyper-intelligent pets someday. Some zoo animals are already playing around with iPads, so maybe we'll have some super smart cyborgs... In any case, here are just a few examples of projects that are studying how smart our fellow vertebrates might be.

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

People with pets sometimes go a bit overboard when it comes to spoiling their animals. There's nothing really wrong with that, but non-pet people might question how the treatment of animals can trump the treatment of people. Here are just a few pet-related stories to ponder.